it passed the senate by a vote of 51-48. vice president joe biden was even on hand to gavel the bill through, marking the historic occasion of the senate kind of working. so this was really a remarkable turn of events. the senate was functional today. it went as it was supposed to go. both sides put up their plans and in the end, one side prevailed. in this case, it was the democrats. the only thing, as there's a little catch i need to tell you about, the reason republicans allowed that vote today, the reason they didn't filibuster like they usually do, is because there is a rule in the constitution which says if any bill relating to taxes must originate in the house. it has to begin in the house. it cannot begin in the senate. this bill did not originate in the house. and that is why mcconnell didn't filibuster. he said, quote, the only reason we won't block it today, the bill, is that we know it doesn't pass constitutional muster and won't become law.

what today's votes are all about are showing the people who sent us here where we stand. okay, so if you thought even for a minute that the senate was actually doing something today, well, poppycock. there's mcconnell to remind you it was all just posturing. thank you, mitch mcconnell. meanwhile, what was happening in the house today? >> i would ask the gentleman from virginia if he would be willing -- or let me rephrase that, he would not object to a unanimous consent in the house to correct a typographical error made by nonpartisan professional staff at the counsel's office. >> madam chairman, this member will reserve the right to object at the appropriate time. >> reclaiming my time -- >> gentleman from california. >> nothing could be more insincere than to pick on professional staff on a typographical error. >> well, you just saw house democrats and house republicans

fighting over whether a typo, a typo in a bill could be fixed or not. i wish i was kidding. i am not kidding. so that was congress today. the senate voted on a pair of totally meaningless bills. the house fought about a typo. if any of this comes as a surprise to you, you probably have not been paying close attention. this is not just a bad congress or even a pretty bad congress. i think the case can, should, and probably must be made that this is one of the worst congresses we have ever had in this country. and i know people say stuff like that all the time. it just sounds like hyperbole, but i think we can prove it. there's convincing evidence that this particular congress, the 112th congress, is one of the worst of all time. let us begin with just the simplest measure of how much congress is getting done. congressional productivity. it's the number of laws they have passed, public laws they have passed. this graph shows the number of

public laws passed by every congress dating back to the 80th congress in 1947. that was a congress harry truman called the do-nothing congress. it varies every year but it's generally in the many hundreds. ready for this congress? yeah, that's it. that tiny little bar over there on the right, the one with the arrow. now, to be fair, there are still five months left in this session, but at this rate, they're on track to be by far the least productive congress in modern times. it's the do less than the do nothing congress. that sort of legislative ineptitude has also led the 112th congress to become the single most despised congress of all time in the eyes of the public. michael bennet of colorado put together this handy graph that shows this particular congress is less popular than the irs, the airline industry, lawyers, less popular than richard nixon during watergate, than the banks in the oil and gas industry,

than bp during the gulf oil spill, than paris hilton. this congress is less popular than communism and hugo chavez. the only thing less popular than congress, fidel castro, and he's not even much less popular. on top of being historically inept and unpopular, there's also the matter of this congress doing real measurable damage to the country. do you remember the debt ceiling debacle last year when republicans took the country to the brink of default for the first time? that wasn't just an ugly political fight. that had real world consequences. this is what monthly job growth looked like last year. looked uneven in the middle, it drops very far. after starting the year off pretty strong, job growth essentially fell off a cliff beginning in may, which is right around the time speaking john boehner kicked off the debt ceiling fight as they debated whether they were going to pay their bills, hiring slows. then the next month, hiring picked up again immediately.

here's how the debt ceiling fight effected consumer confidence in the economy. these are gallop numbers. you see the big drop in 2011? that was the debt ceiling fight and it's a huge drop. by having this useless petulant fight over the debt ceiling, they tanked consumer confidence, they slowed down job growth, and oh, yeah, if you remember, we as a country lost our aaa credit rating for the first time in our history. we just learned this week, by the way, that the debt ceiling fight has so far cost u.s. taxpayers $1.3 billion in extra borrowing costs also. so thank you, 112th congress for that, too. this congress has been so incompetent it can barely even keep the lights on in its own building. and i mean that literally. every year, congress has to pass 12 annual appropriation bills to keep the government funded. that has to happen by october 1st. as you can see, some seconds of congress are more successful of doing that than others.

they get three bills passed on time. i said this congress was bad, i didn't say others were good. could we show how the 112th congress did last year? huh, that's not a graphics mistake. that is a zero. this congress passed exactly zero appropriations bills on time last year. great. one particular department of the government got it the worst, after democrats and republicans failed to reach a compromise last year, the federal aviation administration shut down. in the middle of a weak economy, 4,000 faa workers and 70,000 airport construction workers were furloughed from their jobs. they were out of pay and out of work until congress finally managed to get its act together. this is not normal. this is not how it's supposed to work. this congress has not only been historically unproductive, it has taken steps that have directly harmed the country. that have directly harmed our

economic recovery. and it's not just people like me who think this. it is the most credentialed experts on the matter. thomas mann and normal ornstein have been explaining for four decades, and earlier this year, they came to this joint conclusion. quote, we have been studying washington politics and congress for more than 40 years and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. joining me now, the aforementioned most credentialed experts on the matter, norm ornstein and tom mann, senior fellow in government studies at the brookings institution, also the co-authors of "it's even worse than it looks" how the american constitutional system collided with the new politics of extremism. the book does something that i think is fairly courageous given you have built up bipartisan credibility.

you said what has gone wrong is one of the two parties has become extreme. the republicans are dropped off the cliff and have seen the basic principles of governing like compromise as anathema. is that a correct analysis of your thesis? >> it is, and you're right. it would have been easier to say everybody does it, a plague on both their houses, but that's not the reality now. we know it not just because we kind of see it or we have some anecdotes that would express it. in many ways, some of the republican leaders have provided the evidence directly for us. in particular, mitch mcconnell who often has strange bursts of damaging candor. >> mitch mcconnell the senate minority leader. >> not only said the famous my number one goal is to make barack obama a one-term president, but made it clear, of course we're not going to cooperate with the democrats. if these things looked

bipartisan at all, they would have benefitted from them. there was an obvious strategy, to block, to make any victories look ugly. and we also know dave obi, when they started to do a stimulus bill, called in his ranking republican member jerry lewis and said, we want to work with you. go to your members, let us know what things you like, what things you don't like. lewis laughed and said, i've got orders from on high. we're not going to cooperate. there are smoking guns all over the place. >> tom, i look at what's happening here and i agree with you guys. i think the republican party has become very extreme. i also see a large historic trend towards polarization. the parties getting further apart from each other. one thing you say is there's a mismatch between polarized parties that act as disciplined units and the rules of in particular the senate but congress more generally. and so when i look at this, it seems to be the first thing to do is to get rid of what we call on this show the tarantino, but which in the broader world is

known as the filibuster. am i barking up the wrong tree? >> there's no question we have a mismatch. our parties are now parliamentary style. idealogically polarized, internally unified and vehemently oppositional. now, listen, if mitch mcconnell or john boehner led the opposition party in a parliament and were as aggressive and anti-negotiation as they have been, who cares? the majority puts its program into place and is held accountable, but in this system, a minority party can frustrate the majority and the key to that is the senate filibuster, which as you have written, is an accidental element of senate procedure. it occurred early in the 19th century when the motion to -- on the previous question was left out of the rules.

but that filibuster which was used selectively, carefully, and in full public view for many decades, has now become a routine 60-vote hurdle that allows a minority that can muster 41 votes over the long haul to frustrate any effort of that majority party. if they were willing to deal, if the filibuster requirement set up the incentives to find some agreement between the two parties, it would be okay, but they decided on day one they were not going to negotiate on anything. it would be obama's economy and we wouldn't have our fingerprints on it. >> what worries me about that is we spent a fair amount of time in this segment explaining a weird quirk of procedure. most human beings don't spend

their time paying attention to congress. i worry about the breakdown of accountable in the elections when voters blame the majority be they republican or democrat, for essentially outcomes that are dictated by minority obstruction. if you had no filibuster, you would have much more stimulus, a different health care bill. the broad mass of voters get angry because congress isn't working and they blame the majority, but it tends to work often because of the minority. >> one of the troubles things here, is you can go back to the 1994 midterm elections when a similar process of obstruction took place with newt gingrich led republicans against bill clinton. it worked like a charm in 1994, obstruction worked even more like a charm in 2010. what republicans learned in both cases is if you get people frustrated enough, they just vote the ins out and the outs in. and now we're in a situation with divided government where people are even angrier, where you have a congress that is in much worse repute even than the last one. where are voters to turn?

figuring out who to hold accountable is fuzzy and it's the biggest problem we have given the way the parties are operating. they not only gridlock and do great damage as you say, and it really is damage to the country, the fabric of the economy, but they leave voters with little opportunity to figure out who genuinely to blame. and frankly, the press corps is an unindicted coconspirator to that. >> i cop guilty to that. norm and tom mann, co-authors of" it's even worse than it looks," which i have read and is terrific and you guys should check out. thank you for being here. >> thank you. >> republican presidential candidate mitt romney has a bone to pick with president obama's foreign policy. at least he says he does. in fact, he says it all the time. it's just not clear exactly what that bone is. that is next. and kim jung un of north korea has taken a bride. that's not the best new thing in the world today. that distinction belongs to the reporting of lil' kim's

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in one word, how do the big banks feel about president obama? hint, that word would not be grateful. that story plus tonight's bit of television daring do, the ezra klein challenge, is coming up.

mitt romney wanted to be the republican presidential nominee in the 2008 election. and he failed. he got close, but he didn't win the nomination. senator john mccain won. then he lost to now president barack obama. that was the bad news for mitt romney and the republicans.

the good news is there was a lot for mitt romney to learn from the '08 campaign from mccain and his own. example. for example, do not pick an untested, unvetted shoot for the stars running mate. it will not end well for you. another lesson was a little less obvious and a little more personal. one mitt romney neededo learn the hard way. even if the election doesn't seem like it's all about foreign policy, you have to at least appear like you know what the heck you are talking about. you're asking to be the commander in chief, not the haircut in chief. do not confuse all of the bad guys, all of the people who don't like america and each other and roll them into one ball of evil. >> this is about hezbollah and hamas and al qaeda. and the muslim brotherhood. this is a worldwide jihadist effort to try to cause the collapse of all islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate. >> it's not that. half of those people hate the other half.

that sounds scary what romney said, but it's not true. a couple days after revealing that broad misunderstanding of geo politics, he single handedly manufactured an even bigger embarrassment. what is the one thing you know about the war in iraq? what is the one thing every single reputable every foreign policy expert agrees on? no matter what party afailuation. what is the big agreed upon fact? when the united states invaded in 2003, saddam hussein did not not, not, not have weapons of mass destruction. >> am i the only one thinking in all of the build-up to the war, those weapons of mass destruction got moved? it's possible. >> it's entirely possible. >> what he said there was that the wmds got moved to syria, and no, they did not. it's not even remotely possible that saddam had wmds at the time. even president bush agreed it wasn't remotely possible. it's just a little embarrassing. now it's 2012 and he has a shot

at the presidency all over again and he gets a do-over. few people remember that he didn't know the difference between bad guys and thought that iraq had wmd's. he's got a chance to prove himself a serious foreign policy guy who should be elected president of a country that is still at war even today. we may not act like a country at war, but we are at war and mitt romney wants to be the guy in charge of that war. for my entire lifetime, there has been a singular republican playbook that has been incredibly successful against democrats and it goes like this. republicans are hawkish and tough and uncompromising on security. they will protect you. whereas democrats are weak and they enjoy funny kinds of sailing and all of the flip-flopping. it would be foolish for any republican to see the foreign policy national security advance to democrats. so this year, romney in a close election needed to get it right. on the economy, sure, but don't give up the whole national security thing. the problem is mitt romney is running against the president who finally killed osama bin

laden and ended the really, really unpopular war in iraq and who amped up the drone war like it or not, who has killed almost every guy to hold the title al qaeda's number three. what does romney say about al qaeda to differentiate himself from the president, how does he come across tougher than president obama? yesterday, he spoke to the veterans of foreign wars. the topics were the military and national security and external threats, et cetera. not once in his speech did he mention the phrase al qaeda. not once. go ahead, we have linked the transcript on our blog. go there, hit control f, and type in al qaeda. you get nothing. in anticipation of that speech, romney campaign put out this fact sheet detailing the candidate's foreign policy. there were lots and lots of bullet points, but not any mentions of al qaeda. control f al qaeda, butkus. as we speak, mitt romney is on a foreign tour. his own campaign is pushing it as a big deal and a chance for the candidate to display his

foreign policy global bona fides. there is something missing from the map, though. it makes sense why he would go to london for the olympics, and israel is a key ally, and poland is on the trip, which is fine. in the words of george w. bush, you don't forget poland. but how do you go on your big presidential trip as a presidential candidate and not going to afghanistan? how do you not go to where we're still at war? in an interview today with brian williams, he turned down the opportunity to criticize the president on foreign policy, being on foreign soil and what not. but if you compare mitt romney's foreign policy and obama's foreign policy, you see mitt is very good at used the tough-sounding words but is less good at differentiating himself from the president. joining us now is spencer ackman, national security writer, a friend of mine, and somebody who has dug deep into

romney's foreign policy. good to see you. you wrote a great piece today, and the kite title was "the five things we learned about how mitt romney would run the world." number one is he seems to run the world when it comes to afghanistan, egypt, and iran a lot like obama is running the world. >> a lot like if romney hired obama's aides but they had nothing but bad things to say about themselves. you get a lot of rhetoric about how this is failed policy, an overly politicized policy, but i'm going to do the same thing. >> they don't have functional disagreements, but they have sort of big rhetorical agreements. romney saidbama has been around apologizing for america. and a broad point he makes is the difference between him and obama is resolve, will. he'll have the resolve and there's nothing we can't do if we put our backs into it. that reminds me of early term george w. bush. it was about how much america

wanted it. the real lesson romney's camp, the people who are chastened by the bush administration, they have to be reeling from that. >> what's even stranger about it if you want to look to the guy whose words and actions match up and have been more consistent, that's obama. it's not romney. it's obama who in 2007 said he was going to have an all-out effort to kill osama bin laden with or without pakistan. obama said who he was going to increase troop levels in pakistan. it was obama who said he was going to end the iraq war. when you look at romney then, sometimes now, sometimes last tuesday, sometimes next wednesday, it's a little different. you've got an actually more hawkish romney on iran than you do this time around. all of a sudden now russia is the biggest foe until this new speech at the vfw in which iran poses the bigger danger. it's more difficult to get a sense of where that resolve actually plays out, and i tell

you, i wanted to walk out on this speech so badly. and romney denied me the facts, figures, numbers. >> with a graph, it's hard to do it. on iran, he said now iran is the single biggest threat. obama has done a major virus attack on iran to bring down some of the nuclear reactors. he has been a participant in multiple rounds of sanctions. how different was what romney proposed to do on iran than what obama proposed? >> it's a lot more bellicose. it's very contemptuous of what obama did by saying at the beginning of his presidency he was going to talk to iran without preconditions. on the level of substance, very different. romney didn't rule out negotiating with iran. he just simply said that zero enrichment of uranium was the goal. didn't clarify whether that was the beginning of talks or the end point to them, but didn't immediately say the bombs are going to drop in five minutes.

similarly, he's really against russia. he's against obama moving closer to russia. however, if he backs away from that position, russia has every incentive as it did before the obama administration's drift toward russia to go back to helping iran and frustrating international consensus on iran. it's hard to see how that knits together for romney and his advisers kind of play that away rather than deal with it head on. >> spencer ackman, national security writer for wire.com's danger room. i'm sorry you were denied the opportunity to walk out today. >> one day. maximum information, minimum lapsed time. the wonkiest two minutes in television are coming up next. [ male announcer ] imagine facing the day with less chronic osteoarthritis pain. imagine living your life

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you've probably heard the name sanford weill or sandy weill. he's to wall street bankers say what jerry seinfeld is to sitcoms. or tony ben it is to crooners. if you don't pay much attention, he's the one you have probably heard of. he used to run citibank. he got really, really, really rich doing it. today on cnbc, he said that the united states government should break up the big banks. you know, the big banks like citi which he ran. imagine jerry seinfeld saying there should be no more primetime sitcoms or tony bennett saying there should be no more crooning. that's what he suggested today. that leads us into the ezra klein challenge where i try to

explain complicated stuff especially in the economy that seems at first chance a little mystifying. tonight, what the heck they're talking about when they talk about breaking up the big banks. everyone says it, everyone hears it, but it often doesn't get explained. what is breaking up the big banks? how would they do it, and why would we want to? may i have my two minutes please? okay, there it is. ready, set, you have heard of all of the big banks. jpmorgan chase, wells fargo, these names are big. and it means they have as assets a really big percentage of our gross domestic product. trillions and trillions of dolls. what we're worried about here isn't just that they're big. they're too big. that they are too big to fail, to be precise. when say a bank is too big to fail, it has so much money and so many debts to other banks and investors that its failure could bring down other parts of the financial system as well. that is what happened when lehman and aig began to go down.

when they went down, they owed so much money to everyone else, the very fact of their failure made other banks fail. banks that were fine the day before were not fine the next day. the banks are even bigger today than they were then, before the crisis. this graph from bloomberg business week tells a story. in '06, the five biggest banks had $6 trillion in assets. today, they have $8.5 trillion. that's more than half what the entire u.s. economy produces in a single year. so when folks say they want to break up the big banks, it's because they believe a series of smaller banks would be able to fail without threatening everyone else. there are a couple ways we could go about doing that. the government could tax the hell out of any bank that is bigger than we want it to be. no bank would want to pay such a tax, so it would not allow itself to be so big, but then we would have a bunch of smaller banks. the problem there is that smaller banks can be too interconnected to fail.

they could have so many trading partners and so many debts the financial system can't handle their fall, and then global banks that could be huge and go down. breaking up the banks that are called too big to fail may or may not solve the problem because the problem isn't so much the too big part, it's the fail part. the challenge is how to keep any of them from failing at all, at least in a way that hurts us. three seconds left. and coming up next on the show, the man in charge of overseeing the money to bail out the banks in 2008 has a lot to say about how we're trying to prevent fail. how we're failing at preventing fail, and i'll ask him to explain wall street that loved barack obama in '08 doesn't seem to like him this time around even though the president has left them alone to get incredibly rich all again. the neil barofsky challenge is coming next. [ donovan ] i hit a wall.

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♪ we link people and fortune 500 companies nationwide and around the world. and we will continue to free you to do more and focus on what matters. nah. [ dennis' voice ] i bet he's got an allstate agent. they can save you up to 30% more by bundling your policies. well his dog's stupid. [ dennis' voice ] poodles are one of the world's smartest breeds. are you in good hands? all right, pop quiz. what do gun enthusiasts and wall street executives have in common? for starters, there's not anything intrinsically or fundamentally wrong with what they do. america is based on the freedom to be a super rich banker guy if that's what you want to do or to

collect firearms if that's what you're into, but in both cases, the rest of the about country would really appreciate it if they would avoid being too risky about their hobby. because they can both do terrible, horrible damage if they're not careful. also in terms of their relationship with the government, they would both rather not be bothered. like at all. ask them how's it going and you're likely to get a big what's it to you? there may not be a pair of groups more certain that everybody is out the get them. probably their most significant commonality is that gunowners and wall streeters are both in super duper unadulterated hate with barack obama. why? it's a good question, actually. gun lowers hated we'll be right back in 2008, too. they were sure he going to take away their guns. but if you look at his record, barack obama has done

negative one thing to roll back gun rights. he signed a law allowing people to bring guns into national parks and wildlife refuges. but the gun lobby still hates and fears him and then hates him some more. as for wall street, they did not hate barack obama back in 2008. in fact, once upon a time, a long time ago, wall street loved barack obama. goldman sachs was obama's second largest contributor in 2008. jpmorgan chase was his sixth largest correct for and citigroup was his seventh largest contributor. but this time, wall street is totally bailing on obama. this year, gold man zasacks is mitt myth's biggest contributor. so it seems something has changed between 2008 and today. the bankers aren't just hating the president out of some reflexive paranoia. like the gun lobby. they used to like obama. they gave him tons of money in the last election. if you think there's an easy

explanation, that there's broad agreement that the obama administration has been viciously tough on wall street, you would be wrong. not only is there not a consensus that he has been an enemy of wall street, there's an argument made in some corners he's much too friendly to the finance industry. joining us is neil barofsky who served as special inspector general for t.a.r.p., is a former federal prosecutor for the southern district of new york and is author of a new book, bailout, an inside account about washington abandoned main street while rescuing wall street. he's now a senior fellow at nyu school of law. thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> please tell me if i have this wrong. you don't seem to have been super happy with how the bailout was conducted. you don't seem like a huge fan of it. >> in almost every critical juncture when it came to meaningful choices in conducting the bailout, this administration and the prior administration, there was no material difference between the two, consistently

chose the interests of the wall street banks over that of homeowners and that of the broader economy. and you know, we saw that time and time again, really from the day i got there. >> and so the broad critique you make in your book when you bring up here is that there were a bunch of moments when there was a choice of what to do with the t.a.r.p. funds. they could have gone in a direction that was either more punitive to the banks or put much more strict regulations on them, asked more of them, and they didn't. you could argue it was because their top contributors were bankers if you want to be cynical about it, but the bankers hate him now. they don't at all feel they got a sweet deal out of the administration. they feel dodd/frank was intensely punitive to them, that they have been aggressive in demeaning the role of the financial industry in american life. what is the reason for the gap between what you see as a substance of the choices made on the bailout and how the bankers feel about the bailout and the financial regulations and the obama administration? >> first, there's no question that the president and his

treasury secretary defended the status quo of too big to fail. there were opportunities in regulatory reform that compelled breaking up the banks, almost this cartel of financial institutions that helped drive us to the financial crisis and they beat that back at every opportunity. but you ask a fair question. so why are they not supporting him now? i think that the premise here is based on looking at it and trying to find a degree of humanity that doesn't exist in these institutions. suggesting that they should be grateful for what they received. you know, president obama famously said, i'm the one thing standing between you and the pitch forks is what he said to the 13 of the top bankers. but look, time and time again, the banks had proven that the faith that this administration and prior administration put in them was not justified. you know, during t.a.r.p., that level of deference the program was supposed to restore lending and put lifeblood into the economy, so they didn't put in conditions.

they told me repeatedly, we don't need fraud protections because the banks would never embarrass themselves. they would never risk their reputations. then when forming the housing policies under t.a.r.p., there was this trusting the banks by giving them control over the program and not getting rid of conflicts of interest which they used to shake down homeowners. squeeze out savings and throw them on the foreclosure scrap heap. and now we're saying, isn't it surprising they're not grateful? of course they're not grateful. they're interested in two things. they want to back a winner and they think right or wrong that romney is the horse to back. more importantly, romney is offering them a better deal potentially from their perspective than obama is. even dodd-frank, even though it protected them and put them in a situation where they continue to have this incredible advantage due to their size being too big to fail did have some good restrictions in it. the consumer protection bureau is a very positive thing. and they hate anything that could possibly eat into their

profits and their ability to exploit their size and power, and mitt romney is offering a repeal of dodd-frank. so dodd-frank was helpful in preserving the status quo, but better to have nothing, go back to the go-go days of 2006 and 2007 when they can print money off the backs of american homeowners, and it's really hard to overestimate how thin-skinned bankers are. >> that's what i've always been amazed by. we'll have to continue, i fear, we have to go to commercial. neil barofsky, author of the new book "bailout" thank you for being here. >> my pleasure. >> you know how this is called the great recession, not the depression, not quite yet? well, now we're really getting ready to relive another defining event of the 1930s. tom jones style. i'll explain next. corporate c, verizon 4g lte phone. the global ready one ? yeah, but you won't need... ♪ hajimemashite. hajimemashite. hajimemashite. you guys like football ? thank you so much.

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greenland is frozen or mostly frozen a lot? tonight, i must give you the unsettling news that now in our scary hot summer, greenland is suddenly not so reliably frozen. nasa took this picture of greenland's ice sheet from space recently. the ice sheet typically melts some in the warmer months. the white part is what remained frozen when they went by on july 8th. it's about 40% of the typical whole. four days later, another nasa image has the ice sheet all but gone. only 3% was still frozen. almost all of it had melted. it had all melted in four days. scientists think the ice sheet has already begun freezing again. they say it has happened before in the 1800s. maybe it's okay that greenland melted this month or maybe we're headed for weird times and this is a frightening preview. your hot world is coming up next.

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just plug this into your car, and your good driving can save you up to 30%. you could even try it without switching your insurance. why not give it a shot? carry on. now you can test-drive snapshot before you switch. visit progressive.com today. i don't know where you live, but there is a good chance that it is really hot outside right now. and that it is, in fact, been hot outside right now for a long time. now, you could look at this as a local phenomenon. the city of st. louis just confirmed that a 24th person has been killed by the heat this summer. the temperature was 107 today, the 16th straight day of triple digits. but that is just st. louis. it's their problem, their weather. or you could see the conditions on national scale. across the country, we have

broken more than 40,000 records for daily highs this year and it is only july. it comes after a string of hot years. after last year, nasa reported that nine of the hottest ten years on record have occurred since 2000. this summer we have witnessed a really quite frightening drought. this map comes from the national climactic data center. everywhere you see the dark purple, that is extreme drought. red is severe drought, which is not as bad as extreme, but it is bad. gold stands for moderate drought. a third of all american counties have now been declared disaster areas. the rain will come back, surely, but right now our nation is drying up. america's farmers have not faced this kind of drought for half a century or even more. farmers are pulling their corn early since it's not growing well enough for dinner tables. ranchers are rushing cattle to the market because there's nothing for them to eat. in the short run, the extra beef means hamburgers cost less, but that's temporary. beef, corn, soybeans, the stuff

we make out of beef, corn, and soybeans, all of it should become more expensive. so will milk, eggs, and chicken. food inflation is particularly hard on folks who haven't got much to spend and is hard on the entire economy. in the short run, the agriculture department is pledging to help farmers, but the ag secretary says he cannot do enough, not really. and right in the middle of this crazy heat and the nationwide drought and the crops that won't grow and the food inflation we don't need, our do-nothing, do-less-than-nothing congress cannot pass a farm bill, one of the most routine chores of being in congress. politico looked back through 50 years of farm bills and could not find a farm bill that was stymied the way this one is. more evidence, i guess, that the this is one of the worst congresses ever. i was not lying about that. unless congress acts, the current farm bill expires on september 30th, just in time for all these small-town harvest fairs. as difficult as the drought is for farmers and people who eat, however, it is worse for another sector of the economy, energy. depending on your politics, you might find it good news that the drought has put pressure on

companies that do fracking. you need a ton of water to blast the natural gas out of rock. i'm guessing you would not find it such good news if the drought led to a blackout. the power plants that keep the lights on in much of the country need water to function. there's no water, no light. also, less corn equals more expensive ethanol, which means more expensive gasoline, maybe a nickel or so a gallon. and maybe this is just one historic drought in the decade of hot years. we can't know whether it's weather or climate change. a lot of it we think has to do with la nina that mucks with weather patterns. what we do know is that our plan et has been getting warmer. that's why this nasa map starts with a lot of blue in the 1800s and ends up covered in yellow and red. yellow and red stands for the places where the average temperature that be higher than average, and these days that's just about everywhere. and we also notice as our planet gets warmer, we can confidently predict more extreme weather

events like drought. so this drought, this drought is a preview. it's what will happen a lot if temperatures don't come back down. my colleague on wonk blog posted this map the other day. it shows a forecast of drought conditions at midcentury if we have moderate emission of greenhouse gases. purple, orange, red, and yellow you see all those colors? that's a drought. it is projected drought. worse than what we're seeing now. worse than what we saw during the depression-era dust bowl. so here's what we know. climate change does not just mean that the earth gets hotter, it means the climate gets weirder, it means more droughts and more fires, it means for famines and more floods. and here's something else we know. human beings are contributing to climate change and americans are contributing most of all. but human beings and americans can also give putting the brakes on climate change, but to do so would require governmental action. and right now, our terrible congress cannot even pass a farm bill. ovider is different

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the best new thing in the world today arises out of an international mystery that has been solved. specifically, the mystery of who this woman, seen with north korea's new dear leader, kim jong-un is. she was first spotted in photographs released by the north korean government earlier this month at kim jong-un's side, watching a concert featuring costumed disney characters, presumably unlicensed disney characters. today, she was outed as kim jong-un's wife. it happened during a state television broadcast. we found out that her name is reesel chu, but that's about all the state-run media revealed. however, south korean media says there's a north korean singer named reesel chu, so maybe the same person. i don't know. do you think that is the same person?

but the solution of who is the lady, the mystery is not the best new thing in the world today. neither is the fact that the mystery lady is not the one people thought she might be, a different singer whom i mention because she is known for singing a song called "excellent horse-like lady," which is the most excellent song title in the world. though even that is not the best new thing in the world today. no, the best new thing in the world today comes from andrea mitchell, who is, of course, the chief foreign affairs correspondent for nbc news and the host of her own show on msnbc every day at 1:00 p.m. eastern time. this is how msnbc's andrea mitchell reported the news at the top of our show this afternoon. >> sorry, ladies, he's off the market. north korea's most eligible bachelor, kim jung-un has gotten hitched. >> andrea mitchell is a hard news lady. she has covered every kind of news there is. she has heads of state on speed dial. she can boil world issuesawesom.

and when andrea mitchell cuts to the chase, well, let's just agree, sorry, ladies, he is off the market is the best new thing in the world today. that does it for us tonight. don't forget, you can check out my work at wonkblog.com. now it's time for "the last word" with lawrence o'donnell. tonight, one of the presidential candidates stepped up to a microphone to address the problem of gun violence in america. guess which one. >> keep 234 find politics, you have to endure some sort of spin. >> this is not your father's republican party. >> i surely misheard something. >> people omit entire sentences from a speech. >> they did build this business. >> taking my words about small

business out of context. >> i was very disappointed to hear the words from president obama's roanoke speech. >> there's no doubt we've been tough. >> everybody does it, i understand that. those are the games that are played. >> it's just different. >> both candidates are being heard. >> i was concerned when i saw the initial ad. >> mitt romney has taken every loophole in the book. >> mitt romney is the big government candidate. >> michele bachmann is a fool. >> the gun issue is a loser. >> i will continue to fight to reduce gun violence. >> i haven't heard any discussions about the issue. >> we have a problem with being able to buy 6,000 rounds of ammunition off the internet. >> we do have tough gun laws in massachusetts, i support them. i won't chip away at them. >> these guns are not made for recreation or self-defense. >> i believe that the second amendment is the right course.